


Abscess

by hongmunmu



Series: A serpent in the rice [7]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Longing, Other, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:34:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27227413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hongmunmu/pseuds/hongmunmu
Summary: Kabuto grieves.
Relationships: Orochimaru/Yakushi Kabuto
Series: A serpent in the rice [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/849378
Comments: 1
Kudos: 33





	Abscess

**Author's Note:**

> this is short and i hadn't planned on posting it, but it's the only thing i have finished enough that it could be posted, and i was rereading asitr the other night and felt i ought to put SOMETHING up, especially since it's orochimaru's birthday today and i miss him. so here's some sad post-death orokabu. (this is way, WAY in the future, and a lot will happen between this fic and all the stuff that's already posted in the series, so don't worry about it. canon timeline, etc

Orochimaru haunts Otogakure, every inch of it, his soul and essence scattered limitlessly across the vast expanse of Sound territory. Always just around a corner in one of those long and winding maze-like corridors underground, a snake hiding in a burrow, and now Kabuto holds his breath and his heart beats a little faster whenever he opens a door. Sometimes, he thinks he hears the showers running, is certain he can catch a whiff of that distinct sandalwood perfume as he nears a door. These buildings were always so big, so sinfully big; Kabuto had always said it was completely ridiculous for a place this size to house only a handful of people. Two people could live in this place for decades and never notice the other, never get in the other’s way or cross their path, such was the size of it. But Orochimaru revelled in excess, to the point that it almost felt forced at times; as if each space he entered was a challenge in stretching himself to fill it. 

He’d succeeded, were that the case. There wasn’t a stone in this labyrinth that didn’t make Kabuto’s heart ache with the presence of it. 

If Orochimaru decided to play games with Kabuto, and he had often, then he would rush down corridors and stairwells like a gust of wind, his fingers trailing against one wall and his laugh echoing behind him like a child being chased. He was forever just out of sight. Kabuto always catches the long black hair in the shadows, the pale yellow fabric of a long kimono sleeve, just vanishing around a corner. A cool and thin hand tapping his shoulder lightly on days Kabuto has focused too hard and worked too long, telling him,  _ take a break _ ; the hands are attached to nothing, and disappear when Kabuto turns his head. 

It’s only ever fragments, with Orochimaru. Never the whole picture. 

But despite how palpable the lingering presence was in the hideouts, how much evidence Orochimaru had left behind, clothes waiting to be worn, scrolls waiting to be written, hair combs sat on vanities with one long, long strand of black hair tangled in its teeth - it was the forests that seemed to destroy Kabuto the most. 

He hadn’t known, of course; at the time, all he knew was that he had to leave these physical remainders behind, so that he’d stop weeping into bedsheets and cradling unfinished cups of tea, stop feeling so smothered by the memory of Orochimaru that clogged the air in those poorly-ventilated spaces. 

But as it turned out, the great forests Kabuto had set out to travel were more haunted than any palace, temple or dungeon. 

If the things that he’d left behind were a skin that was shed, then the snake itself was elsewhere; and as Kabuto breathed that damp and cool air, blue with oxygen and the scent of rotting foliage, he saw that this was where Orochimaru’s soul had gone.    
There are no physical reminders, of course; there’s no reason for Kabuto to believe Orochimaru had ever even stepped foot here. Yet.

The days never seem to reach peak sunlight, always caught in a perpetual dewy haze that never quite hits the clarity of thought and purpose offered by a harsh winter midday. The mist is a permanent denizen here, and wraps itself around everything, which is what Kabuto tells himself forms the mirages. And yet, he breaks into cold sweat when he sees a tree that, thin and twisted, even faintly resembles a human form; and every snake he sees in these deep woods seems to stare at him a little too long, a little too intently, until he takes a step closer and sees he’s being spooked by no more than particularly meandering tree roots. He sees figures dart between the trees, and in blind stumbling chases after them, loses all sense of direction; his smouldering campfires seem to vanish completely, no light visible to guide him back to his shelter through that shroud of fog. Kabuto had never been any good at hide and seek.

Even time, the mother of destruction, even she could not erode Orochimaru’s influence. He lingered like a stain, an odour that clung, unconscious, to the walls and furniture, coating even the darkest corners of this dismal castle with his memory like a territorial cat. His spirit remains, even if you were to take all physical remainders of him - the silk kimono dropped to the floor on the last night they slept together, forgotten behind a screen, never folded. The sandals left by the door, facing outwards, waiting for him to emerge from his lair to set out into the woods again. Brushes, combs laid out in colonies on vanities and bathroom sinks, still threaded with strands of that thick, black, impossibly long hair. A half-smoked cigarette propped up on an ashtray, waiting to be picked up again, sat beside an open scroll, half-filled with scratching discordant notes drafting a new ninjutsu - never finished. Kabuto couldn’t hope to decode those fragmented notes Orochimaru left behind, things that could never be pieced together by any mind but his. Slips of paper with odd words on them, nonsense sounds, half-drawn sigils that mean nothing to Kabuto or indeed anyone; sequences of numbers, odd diagrams that portrayed some abstract concept, unlabelled and unclear. No one will know what was going to be born from those notes now. That jutsu would never be performed, whatever it was, whatever Orochimaru meant it to be. _ Write these down _ , Kabuto would always nag, be clearer, finish this and that. _ I’ll do it another time, _ Orochimaru would’ve said, smiling listlessly. All those ideas in that tireless imagination, all those grand plans, these things that would never have form. Dead in their womb. Stillborn.

The dust helps. 

Kabuto walks the perimeter of each and every hideout and their interiors, touching every crack in the wall, every marble tile, every bookshelf. Traces them as if to check that he hadn’t missed anything. He tries on long-abandoned clothes, he takes unlabelled substances long past their best use. He time travels. 

It’s as if the years had never come to pass at all. 

Walking those corridors, it feels like Orochimaru never left him, like if he walks far enough he’ll eventually open a door and see his master waiting there, sat on the bed with his back to the door, running a gold comb through his hair idly; kimono half-tied, all of him lopsided and natural, Orochimaru alone. Not performing, not thinking about himself through someone else’s eyes; just existing. Kabuto kisses Orochimaru’s jaw, absently. His skin tastes sweet from sickness. 

And as Kabuto steps closer he’ll reach out, his hand outstretched in the intent to just brush against the back of Orochimaru’s neck, luck chancing upon him that he could have that one perfect, virgin, beautiful moment where Orochimaru is shown in honesty. Without pretense or poise. And Kabuto can reach out, and finally, finally, he can understand. 

But he never quite makes that touch. Always almost. Always just out of reach. It’s better that way.

Kabuto finds the key is to never wait— never be still. It’s when he’s still that the ghosts catch up with him, to settle like dust. 

He always thought thinking was a good thing. He used to work himself into knots for the fun of it, find himself a paradox to solve before breakfast, chewing over a logistical dilemma along with his rice. His head had been a shelter to him once, a verbose playground privy to he alone; there he could indulge in all the bile he wished, fantasies, insults, his private bitternesses— and joys, too. He revelled in what that space had been to him, once. Now he did anything to stay away. Afraid of what he might find there. So he moves, country to country, forest to forest, sleeping in the mud and undergrowth with a face torn by dead branches and clothes snagged by snaring brambles, his once-tan skin now greyed, lifeless, marred with dirt. The earth gets colder beneath the soles of his bare feet, but he doesn’t mind it anymore. His feet have been bare for eons, and the numbness, too, keeps the ghosts at bay. His tied hair mats, so he cuts it off one night by an almost-frozen stream with a rusty blade, and watches it sail down the water like an offering. 

He thinks, perhaps, he might be dead.


End file.
